I’ve been paying more attention to Facebook with regard to B2B, especially with all of the changes going down (including Timeline, which deployed worldwide last week). I’m particularly intrigued with the competition between G+ and FB. I absolutely LOVE how G+ has forced FB to become more transparent and easier to use.

I also love how it’s now much more transparent that FB is no longer a strictly social networking platform — which it used to be. It’s now a network marketing platform.

Viewing FB from this perspective has made me re-evaluate it with regard to B2B. Can B2B companies use FB effectively? I say yes, but with a couple of caveats. One, FB is a place where you talk to people versus selling to them, which a huge mind shift for companies bent on measuring “ROI” in hard numbers (i.e. leads that become sales), and two, FB is a place where you can let your hair down a little bit and have some fun, also a huge mind shift for companies that have a more conservative approach to business in general.
With all of this in mind, I was particularly interested in the new report from Eloqua — 10 Ways to “Solve” Facebook for B2B. After reading it, I had a few questions, which Joe Chernov, VP of Content Marketing, was happy to answer.

Dianna Huff: Joe, in this report you talk about sweepstakes. How can B2B use these? They seem more B2C.

Joe Chernov: Dianna, you’re correct. Sweepstakes can be tricky for B2B. After all, the potential audience for a B2B product is typically more finite than for consumer goods. That said, sweepstakes can work for B2B marketers, it just takes a little creative thinking.

For example, we ran a sweepstakes in concert with EmpireAvenue a “virtual” stock exchange in which members invest virtual currency, called Eaves, in one another. EmpireAvenue is immensely popular with our target audience: marketers and digital media professionals. So when we gave EmpireAvenue members a chance to win Eaves by joining our Facebook community, it was a natural fit. We were attracting the right audience.

DH: Interesting! You’re actually the second person I know to mention EmpireAvenue. Now I’ll have to check it out.

Regarding weekend posting, which you talk about briefly in your report, I think this is a really important consideration for B2B, especially since so many companies block FB. Can you expound on this a little bit?

JC: You’re exactly right: the “weekend Facebook” audience is comprised of different people than “work hours Facebook.” The goal on weekends isn’t necessarily to reach massive numbers of business professionals, but rather to reach new members, like those who work for companies where Facebook is blocked, or those who just don’t think to get on Facebook during work hours. A community is comprised of all members, not just the members who are available when it’s convenient for the brand.

DH: Joe, I like how you put that — reaching new members. That ties in with the report comScore and Facebook put out in July, The Power of Like: How Brands Reach and Influence Fans Through Social Media Marketing. According to the report, only 16% of Fans are reached by branded content by a brand that posts five out of seven days. One reason for this is that people miss content if they’re not logged on when you post the content.

In your report, you mention the Golden Ratio. Can you explain what this means?

JC: The Golden Ratio is a mathematical term that is derived from nature. Apparently the shape of a nautilus, the veins in leaves, even the proportions of humans, all share the same mathematical dimensions. So we decided to see if on Facebook there was a “Golden Ratio” … that is, a normal balance between “Likes” and comments, and whether or not that ratio differed between B2B and B2C companies.This data is in the deck so that brands can see if the way their Fans engage with them is consistent with these norms or if it differs sharply from them. It’s a baseline.

DH: Ok, excellent. And one last question. You also mention that automated posting tools have a NEGATIVE impact on posts being seen. Can you talk a little about that, too?

JC: In our experience, auto-posting tools had a NEGATIVE impact on our posts being seen. Historically Facebook’s algorithm has frowned on third-party publishers.That appears to have changed, according to a November 7 post at AllFacebook, but in our experience, our “jobs at Eloqua auto-publisher” had a negative impact.

Joe, thanks for taking the time to answer these questions!

Be sure to download Eloqua’s report. And, if you haven’t already, come join me on Facebook. I post content that you might find interesting — everything from links to new reports and data to articles that have ideas about how to improve your thinking.

What do you think about Facebook and B2B? Do you think Timeline will be a game changer and force more B2B companies to incorporate FB into their marketing campaigns? Leave your comments below.

Bloggers (well-known and not so well-known) are prime influencers in your market. Although a blogger may not use your product or service, he or she may track influential trends, companies and events. Get on a blogger’s radar — and follow a few simple rules — and you can easily build a relationship and garner some favorable press.

So how do you win the ear of influential bloggers in your market? I put this question to Mary Sullivan of SHIFT Communications, a PR firm with offices in Boston, San Francisco and New York.

Sullivan is a senior account executive with the firm and the only PR person whose emails land in my Gmail Priority Inbox — which is saying a lot. I receive dozens of pitches each week, all of which end up in the “everything else” part of my inbox, which is basically the “delete without reading” section.

(Priority Inbox is Gmail’s relatively new tool that sorts your emails, separating the most important from the rest, based on your usage patterns. It’s what has motivated me to provide quality, targeted content — but that’s another post!)

According to Sullivan, your messages have to be targeted and genuine to get a blogger’s attention — as most of us are great BS detectors and can spot a “dash and blast” email a mile away. Sullivan recommends that you use whatever tools you have to customize each message to each individual blogger.

Yes, this means you actually have to get to know individual bloggers.

Because individual pitches take more time, Sullivan makes sure she’s cultivating the right bloggers. In deciding whom to pitch, she reads each blogger’s most recent posts and selects (or not) based on what she sees.

When she finds a blogger she wants to engage, her account team follows the blogger’s posts and looks for opportunities to comment and add value. Over time, she and the blogger develop a mutually beneficial relationship: She adds value to the blog by engaging in conversation, providing information, and even (indirectly) generating blog topic ideas. In return, the blogger learns more about the products or services Sullivan promotes and may choose to write about them.

Sullivan prefers Twitter, blogs and LinkedIn as relationship building tools for her B2B clients over Facebook.

What methods have you tried to win the attention of bloggers? What’s worked and what hasn’t? Leave your comment below.

Full disclosure: Neither Mary Sullivan or SHIFT Communications asked me to write this article nor was I paid to do so. Eloqua is SHIFT’s client. I have written and Tweeted about Eloqua’s content in the past because I think they produce content that’s relevant and helpful to marketers. (Especially loved their Wikipedia Grande Guide.)

If you’re like me, you’re overwhelmed with the amount of marketing information being presented on an hourly basis. On top of that, keeping up with new technologies and terminologies is mind-boggling.

Quite frankly, my eyes have begun to permanently glaze over. So I was happy to hear that the marketing folks at Eloqua agree with me.

“You are correct,” says Joe Chernov, Director of Content for Eloqua, which provides marketing automation products and services. “People tune out when confronted with too much information. And, companies often use confusing concepts and jargon to explain what they do, especially when it comes to marketing automation. We wanted to turn our focus outward and get people’s attention through entertainment as well as substance.”

The result is Eloqua’s wonderful new Grande Guides campaign, complete with spokesperson Juan Eloqua, a “cheeky yet romantic” businessman who specializes in growing coffee — and revenue.
“Our CMO, Brian Kardon, came up with the idea for Juan Eloqua — it was one of those ‘lightning strikes’ type of ideas. Another idea was to film coffee barristas answering people’s questions, but we quickly realized that would be an execution nightmare.”

Campaign goal is more than just buzz

Casting, filming and editing the videos took eight weeks using a professional camera crew and a Screen Actors Guild (SAG) actor. Brian wrote the script; Joe was responsible for developing the Grande Guides.

“We had to go back and reshoot the videos because we wanted Juan to introduce the various Guides,” says Joe. “So that added to the execution time.”

The campaign launched August 24, 2010. “We put it out on various social media platforms and set it free,” says Joe. “However, we want more than buzz. We’re sending out over 100,000 emails asking people to subscribe to the content.

“And, because we’re always looking to add information to profiles in our database, we’ve put up forms to collect this information, which we’ll then use for our own lead scoring. We’re also hoping to reactivate inactive prospects.”

Grande Guides present one concept at a time

What I like best about this campaign is that Eloqua is seeking to educate people — the foundation of successful B2B marketing — while having some fun in the process. As such, the Grande Guides have been designed to look like a beloved moleskin notebook with valuable content . . . the kind you don’t want to throw away.

“The point with the Guides,” says Joe, “is to boil down complex concepts into a document someone can read in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee.”

The first in the series, The Grande Guide to Lead Scoring, for example, gives you a detailed overview of the topic, why it’s important, and how to do it. Information is presented in an easy-to-read format with lots of subheads, call outs, graphs — and coffee stains.